“Salvation involves the whole person, body and soul. Salvation also includes the restoration of wholesome community among Christians. Its effects spill over into the entire social order…

No amount of good deeds in noble social action can earn divine forgiveness. The only way to enter Jesus’ kingdom is by accepting it as a gift (Luke 12:32). But kingdom people embrace kingdom values. Sixteen times the New Testament calls Jesus Savior. Four hundred times it calls him Lord.

We will not receive Christ’s unmerited forgiveness if we persist in rejecting him as Lord of our whole lives. We must ‘work out’ our salvation through lifelong discipleship that pursues purity and justice (Phil. 2:12). The God who made us for community insists that a right relationship with God is inseparable from right relationships with our neighbors.”

I recently finished Sara Miles’ excellent new book Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion. Sara chronicles her surprising mid-life transformation from atheist to Christian and her calling to establish a food pantry in one of San Francisco’s most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Passionately committed to the unconditional welcome of Jesus’ Table, Sara and her food pantry volunteers embrace schizophrenics, drug addicts, little children, ex-cons, and sweet old ladies alike. One particular section of the book has really stuck with me:

So I’d sit down next to people and let them talk or cry; I’d listen and put my hands on them; at some point, I’d pray aloud, without really knowing where the words were coming from. It felt homey, not mysterious. But it usually made me cry too…

If my carefully calibrated difference from others wasn’t going to be the vitally important thing about me, then my identity was going to be bound up with all kinds of other people at their most vulnerable and unattractive…

It was my own weakness, my own confusion and hunger; it was everything I couldn’t be sophisticated and together about. Of course I was going to weep, and pray, with her.

In preparation for our telephone conversation, I had asked our blog participants to contribute questions. I read the questions to Shane and asked him to share his thoughts.

The first question was from Joe, “Ask him about making his own clothes. Yes, you heard me correctly. The guy. Makes. His own. Clothing.” Laughing, Shane explained, “I love making my clothes! My mom taught me; we sew together almost liturgically every Christmas the clothes for the next year.”

He shared that he caught the vision while living in Calcutta in a village of people with leprosy. Since they were completely cut off from the rest of society, they had to make their own clothes and shoes, grow their own food and be a fully self-sustaining community. Shane found himself mesmerized with the way of life that they had created, “a new society in the shell of the old.”(more…)